The era of English is coming to an end. Within 10 years, one in five Americans will speak Spanish as their first language. Within 25 years, several states will have more Spanish speakers than English speakers, and one in 10 Americans will speak Chinese as their primary language. Within 100 years, there will be 40 languages officially recognized as American languages. English will absorn thousands of new words, as it...

The 1970s was the decade of the digital revolution. Computers existed long before that penultimate chapter of changing history but they came to the fore during the Age of Disco and the “Me Generation.” It was the 1970s when the world began to quantize the universe into a series of ones and zeroes. I was in Los Angeles at the time and perhaps no field popularized the acceptance of digital reality more than the field...

Let’s start with something we all know. Every adult understands the concept that we have two parts of the mind, a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. We know the conscious mind’s role. It does stuff like analyze and calculate. It looks at data and offers opinions as to right action. In short, the conscious mind thinks. But it wasn’t always that way.

The world is about to be transformed by self-driving cars. Once these self-directed vehicles are introduced, they will quickly take over -- road accidents will become intolerable when we discover just how often they happen, how deadly they are, and how frequently they are caused by human error. Expect our roads to be almost entirely free of human-driven vehicles within 15 years.

The tale of "Sidventures," a photo book that doubles as a children’s story, starts here in Omaha, on a frigid December day in Dundee. Alex Hopes was just hanging out at home when he got a phone call that would eventually alter his life.

He told The Reader about it in an email interview from his home in Austin, Texas, where he now makes a living as a photographer.